Among the most outstanding African-American educators of
the post-reconstruction era of the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth
century were Dr. Anna Julia Cooper and Ms. Nannie Helen Burroughs. During this extremely
difficult and rocky period for African-Americans these dedicated sisters were confronted
with the arduous tasks of struggling for racial uplift, economic justice and social
equality.

Anna Julia Cooper (the eldest of the two women) was born
Anna Julia Haywood on August 10, 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the daughter of an
enslaved African woman, Hannah Stanley, and her White master. From early on Cooper
possessed an unrelenting passion for learning and a sincere conviction that Black women
were equipped to follow intellectual pursuits. This thinking ran strongly against the
popular opinion of the day. To the contrary, Cooper later said that "not far from
kindergarten age" she decided to become a teacher. In Cooper's words, speaking on the
lack of the emphasis on formal education for Black girls, "Not the boys less, but the
girls more." In 1867 Cooper entered St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate
Institute in Raleigh. In 1925, at the age of sixty-seven, she earned a Ph.D. from Sorbonne
University in Paris, France, becoming only the fourth African-American woman to obtain
such a degree. At the tender age of 105, after a lifetime of educating African-American
youth, Dr. Cooper died peacefully in her home in Washington, D.C.

Although exceptionally brilliant Anna Julie Cooper was not
an isolated phenomenon. Nannie Helen Burroughs, another remarkable sister, was born on May
2, 1879 in Orange, Virginia, to John and Jennie Burroughs. Nannie Helen Burroughs,
described as a "majestic, dark-skinned woman," was only twenty-one years old
when she became a national leader, catapulted to fame after presenting a dynamic speech
entitled "How the Sisters are Hindered from Helping" at the annual conference of
the National Baptist Convention in Richmond, Virginia in 1900.

Nannie Helen Burroughs became a school founder, educator
and civil rights activist. She identified African-American teachers such as Anna Julia
Cooper as important role models. She attended public schools in Washington, D.C.,
graduated with honors in 1896, studied business in 1902, and received an honorary M.A.
degree from Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky in 1907.

An early pupil and eventual colleague of Cooper, Nannie
Helen Burroughs devoted her energies to the uplift of African people. Burroughs was a
brilliant and powerful orator. Both in the press and on the lecture circuit she denounced
lynchings, racial segregation, employment discrimination and the European colonization of
Africa. According to Burroughs biographer Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Burroughs'
"verbal attacks were coupled with calls to action. During World War I, criticism of
President Woodrow Wilson's silence on lynching led to her being placed under government
surveillance. Her uncompromising stand on racial equality included a woman's right to vote
and equal economic opportunity."

Like Anna Julia Cooper, Nanny Helen Burroughs lived a full
and accomplished life, dying on May 20, 1961 at the ripe age of eighty-two.